Back to the Beginning - The Plucker History

Menne, Anna, Alma & Lydia

My Grandfather Plucker came from a farm family but married a preacher’s daughter. They had six children, two had passed away. Esther died of unknown causes at age four. Wilbur was to become a minister, but was killed in a horse riding accident when he was home on vacation from school in Dubuque, Iowa. My father was to take his brother’s place and become the minister in the family. He went to the Academy in Dubuque (a high school connected to what began as a Seminary for German Presbyterian students, evolved into a University and also included the Academy which as a boarding school provided education to the ‘German youth in the Midwest) where he met my mother. (Somehow the idea of becoming a minister didn’t materialize.)

The other siblings were Anna Poppens, Lydia Mihelic and Alma Wadleigh.


 

Grandpa & Grandma Thaden



My mother also came from a farm family. There were eleven children, nine boys and two girls. Mom had a desire to make something of herself, so persuaded her parents to send her to Dubuque to the Academy. She aspired to become a nurse and after some time she was accepted at a nursing school in Huron, South Dakota. She never finished the course because the love bug had bitten both my parents. They were married on June 4, 1924 at her parents’ home in Willow Lake, South Dakota.

 

 

My Dad
 

 

 

 

The first years of my parents’ marriage involved a lot of moving from place to place. The first year they lived in Lennox. Mom’s brother, Clifford, lived with them while he attended high school there. Grandfather Plucker owned a grain elevator in Lennox and my dad managed it until it was sold. I never knew the reason for the sale of the elevator.

My parents moved to Princeton, Illinois, where dad worked for Uncle Dr. Pete Poppens (Aunt Anna’s husband) on his farm. I was born there on June 4, 1926. But things seemed not to go well there so they moved to Dubuque, Iowa. Mom’s brother, Jerry, was going to school there to become a minister. My brother, Robert, was born in Dubuque on January 3, 1928.

 



Dena & M.E.J. with baby Bob & toddler Dots

More hard luck: some time during the time they lived in Dubuque, my father had an appendectomy. He worked in a “Dime Store” and also tried selling insurance. This must not have been successful either. It was sometime in 1929 that the young Plucker family decided to move back to South Dakota to farm. I believe things were very hard for my mother in those years.

Grandfather John P. Plucker owned two pieces of farm land. One consisted of 160 acres and the other 240 acres. Alas! They both were already rented for another year or more; my parents rented another farm place temporarily. I believe they always called that place “Wolf’s Place.”

 

 

Bobby, Jeanie, & Dotty - Spring, 1939

My sister, Jean, was born on the 240 acre farm on November 25, 1938. Bob, Jean and I all attended rural school and Lennox High School. I stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Plucker my freshman year. The next year Bob and I drove an old “clunker” to Lennox every day. Jean had to ride the school bus when she went to High School (although she also stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Plucker her first year. She is twelve years younger than me.

All of the above information shines a light on why all three of the Plucker children were born in different states.